The present disclosure relates generally to an apparatus for and a method of preparing plant tissue (e.g., somatic embryos, embryogenic tissue, organogenic tissue, vegetative tissue, seeds, etc.) for plant production. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to an at least partially automated apparatus for and a method of preparing plant tissue for plant production.
The process of preparing plant tissue, such as somatic embryos, for plant production (e.g., in the case of conifer treatment, etc.) generally includes the following steps: 1) cone collection and storage; 2) somatic embryogenic initiation on an initiation medium; 3) maintenance of embryogenic tissue on a maintenance medium; 4) cryogenic storage of embryogenic tissue and subsequent cryoretrieval; 5) growth of embryogenic tissue; 6) development of somatic embryos on an embryo development medium; 7) harvesting of embryos; 8) conditioning of harvested embryos; and 9) germination.
Plating, inspecting, treating, collecting and/or storing of plant embryos prior to germination are key operations in many steps of the plant production process. The activities necessary for performing these operations, however, are usually performed by hand. For example, individual embryos are typically transferred to and from various media and vessels and must be plated onto media, one by one using forceps and often with the guidance of a dissecting microscope.
Such methods are burdensome, time-consuming, costly, and susceptible to contamination. Not only that, but only a limited number of embryos can be plated, inspected, treated and/or collected by a single person during a given period of time. Accordingly, any attempt to increase the number of embryos that can be produced and subsequently conditioned for germination necessarily requires an increase in manpower, which itself can be costly and often impractical.
There have been attempts to automate certain steps in the production of plant embryos. For example, U.S. Publication No. 2006/0260015, titled “Somatic Embryogenesis and Embryo Harvesting and Method and Apparatus for Preparing Plant Embryos for Plant Production” and assigned to ArborGen, LLC, the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, discloses an at least partially automated apparatus for washing and harvesting plant embryos. There have also been attempts to automate the inspection of plant embryos. However, prior attempts to automate steps within the production process require a separate piece of equipment to perform the particular step to be automated. Since the production of plant embryos involves multiple steps, requiring a separate piece of equipment for each step would be costly.
Accordingly, there is a need in the agricultural industry and, in particular, the forestry sciences, for an apparatus for and a method of reducing human intervention within the plant production process. Reducing human intervention may reduce the likelihood of contamination and/or may provide for a more efficient system (e.g., one that can be readily scaled-up for commercial purposes, etc.). There is also a need for an apparatus that is capable of performing more than one step within the production process so that the amount of equipment needed to provide for an at least partially automated process (and the cost associated therewith) can be reduced.